Authors, Kai Strand & LA Dragoni

It’s Friday! Time for my blog feature, Building Character in which you get to meet characters from a book. Talking to a character outside of their book is fun! Huge. Amounts. Of fun.  This week Strands of Thought is excited to host royalty! As part of the OH WHAT A KNIGHT book tour. Please help me welcome Prince Broderick and Princess Gabrielle from DIFFERENT KIND OF KNIGHT, which released today! ( There is also has a generous giveaway going, be sure to enter at the bottom of the post!) Prince Broderick and Princess Gabrielle, would you please introduce yourselves and tell us a little about you? Hello, I'm Prince Broderick of Delphine, or Captain Brody, or just plain Brody. I've spent the last year avoiding my duties as Crown Prince as I worked to figure out if I even deserved to lead my people after all the grief my father caused them. It took running in to Rielle for me to learn my Fate. Hello. I'm Princess Gabrielle of Faldaera, or Rielle, First Knight...

Welcome to Three Times A Charm. I love meeting new authors, illustrators, bloggers, agents, editors or promoters from the children’s publishing industry and sharing their careers with my readers. Today I'm happy to be hosting a stop on LRW Lee's book release tour. LRW, please tell us a little about you. As early as 8 years old, after reading The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis, I wanted to write a book. My family didn’t have a lot of money and my older brother and I were encouraged to use our imaginations to entertain ourselves.  And use them we did – climbing trees and tree forts, using a quilt for a matchbox car city, making puppets and putting on shows, and much more and my creativity and imagination grew. I went to college and got a degree in Accounting.  However, most folks frown on “creative accounting”, so I put my imagination on hold.  My business and creative interests eventually led me to found and grow a successful company which, with...

My husband and I share cooking detail, which I love – btw. He'll cook one night. I'll cook the next. We both have the habit of popping in our earbuds and tucking our phone in our back pocket and listening to our latest audio book while we chop and mix and sear. The other night I decided to make some burgers. I sautéed chopped carrot and garlic to add to the ground beef before I broiled the patties and while the burgers cooked, I sautéed bell pepper, onion and mushroom to pile on top. I prepped the Orowheat sandwich thins, steamed some fresh green beans and dinner was served. ( ß totes yum, btw) BUT, it wasn’t all sunshine and ground beef. I decided to listen to the end of Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick. I was 5/6 of the way through the book, so I suspected it was going to be emotional. I was right. As I formed the patties and stirred the sautéed veggies, I had to keep bending backward so the tears would fall onto my shirt and not into our meal. (Trying...

My children are old enough that if I were to tell them to, “Use your words,” they would most likely pull out a few I had to look up in the dictionary, or maybe even one or two that would make me blush. However, “Use your words” is a popular way for today’s parents to help their young children focus when they are too excited or upset to express themselves well. Do you suppose Nancy Lincoln said, “Use thee words, Abraham.” Or, Alberta King had to scold, “Your words, Martin! Use your words, son.” Regardless of whether their mothers had to correct their youthful correspondence or not, the two men grew to become two of my favorite orators. Funny thing about public speaking. You can be well-spoken, engaging and confident, but if your audience isn’t passionate about your subject, you won’t connect. Both men spoke on timely topics that people felt very passionate about—whether for or against. In Lincoln’s first inaugural address, 1861 he said: In your hands, my dissatisfie...

Welcome to Three Times A Charm. I love meeting new authors, illustrators, bloggers, agents, editors or promoters from the children’s publishing industry and sharing their careers with my readers. Today’s guest is author, Sharon Stanley. Sharon can you tell us a little about you, please? I live in rural Virginia, with 5 chickens, 4 dogs, 3 cats, 2 boys, one husband and lots of cows in a crop circle of craziness called White Oak Farm.  It’s a working, family-owned farm which has been in my husband’s family for over 100 years.  Writing material is never a problem!   The Little Dog in the Middle of the Road,  recently published by Silver Tongue Press, is my first in print.   I have several others under contract. When not writing picture books, I am usually up to my ears in artistic projects or writing about farm life and my publication journey on my blog, www.farmandfrufru.blogspot.com , that is when I’m not needed on the farm.  I’m a...

In general, writing is a singular activity. You sit alone in front of a laptop with your only companions being those inside your mind. Facebook calls your name, flashy blog posts draw your attention, next thing you know, the day is waning and you’re imaginary friends are heading out to dinner without you. How can you keep yourself focused? Commit to the  2014 Writers Rebel Creed By following the suggested idea to post a monthly blog update you keep your eye on your target of getting new words into a Word document – maybe even one with a shiny new book title. (Unlike mine that is usually the characters’ names until the fourth or fifth revision!) Stopping to review what you’ve accomplished in a month is a fantastic way to remind yourself that you ROCK at this writing thing. Taking another moment to look forward one month helps you to formulate a plan on how to stay on track. Goals can only be achieved by taking steps toward them, but if you aren’t watching where yo...

It’s Friday! Time for my blog feature, Building Character in which you get to meet a character from a book. Talking to a character outside of their book is fun! Huge. Amounts. Of fun.  This week Strands of Thought is excited to host Kelly from Down Under Calling .  It’s nice to meet you Kelly. Tell us a little about yourself. I’m Kelly, Andy’s friend. Andy lives in a tiny condo down the street from my house.  His parents are still married, but his dad got downsized – hence the condo.  My parents are divorced, so neither of them take much notice of me. I don’t get why they divorced – they still fight every time they see each other. I also inherited a bunch of step-grandparents when both of them remarried.  All of them give me stuff. Why is that?  I guess they think gifts and money will make me feel better about the divorce – kinda crazy thinking. . . right? Divorce is a difficult situation for everyone involved. What would you like to see happ...

Welcome to Three Times A Charm. I love meeting new authors, illustrators, bloggers, agents, editors or promoters from the children’s publishing industry and sharing their careers with my readers. Today’s guest is author, Terry Cook. Terry can you tell us a little about you, please? I grew up in Omaha, NE in an Irish Catholic neighborhood where I never had to be afraid someone would try to abduct me or any of my friends. I had a no frills education by today’s standards (graphic design, shop, jazz ensemble) but could read, write and compute admirably well. If I was in trouble at school, I was in trouble at home. So I learned to keep my mouth shut and not complain about my teacher. My mother did not want to hear it. My job was to go to school and learn as much as I could, plain and simple. She had been denied the opportunity to go to college and she made sure everyone of her children went so that we could have real futures. I was an educator for almost 30 years, which was a...

Happy New Year Boys and Girls! Sorry the blog has been on radio silence. I’ve been contemplating its future. I still haven’t come to a decision, so I guess things will continue on—as is—until I have some sort of blog epiphany. Those happen, right? Today I want to talk about Facebook. There are many social networks out there and I’m active on several of them. Regardless of their seeming self-sabotage, I prefer Facebook to any others. What do I mean by self-sabotage? I’m referring to their need to make constant changes that tend to alienate so many people. Though I sometimes find it tiring to log on and find buttons/tabs switched from the left to the right, rearranged columns, or a new font for the notifications…most of the changes simply take getting used to. But some of those changes are less obvious and harmful to those of us trying to create a presence on the site. Most recently (beginning of December), Facebook changed the algorithm used to decide what shows up in...